Alexander Stepanowitsch Kutschin

Alexander Kutschin

Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin ( Russian Александр Степанович Кучин ; born September 16 ^{. Jul} / 28. September  1888 ^greg. In Kuschereka , Arkhangelsk Governorate , Russian Empire ; † probably 1913 on the Taimyr peninsula ) was a Russian oceanographer and polar explorer. He was a participant in Roald Amundsen's Fram expedition and captain of the Hercules on Vladimir Russanov's last expedition .

Life

Early years

Alexander Kutschin was born in Kuschereka on the Onegabusen of the White Sea in 1888 . He was the eldest son of Stepan Grigoryevich Kutschin, who was the captain of sealers and merchant ships. Alexander Kutschin first attended the village school and then the three-class city school in Onega . During the summer holidays he accompanied his father to seal the seal in Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard and also got to know the ports of northern Norway. In 1904 he began his training at the Nautical School in Arkhangelsk , the oldest in Russia. During the Russian Revolution of 1905 , the school went on strike in protest of the arbitrariness. As a result, the class in which Kutschin studied was closed and he himself was expelled from school as a strike leader. Kutschin was a sailor on a Norwegian fishing schooner, learned Norwegian and helped Russian emigrants in Vardø smuggle illegal writing into Russia. When lessons at the nautical school resumed, Kuchin returned to Arkhangelsk. He was arrested by the police but soon released. In 1909 he completed his studies as a helmsman on a long voyage and received a gold medal for his achievements. Kutschin hired a sealer in Norway and drove first to Jan Mayen , then to Spitsbergen. In Tromsø he met the marine biologist Johan Hjort , who recommended him to the oceanographer Bjørn Helland-Hansen , who ran the Biological Station of the Bergen Museum . Kutschin became Helland-Hansen's pupil and assistant.

Fram expedition

When Roald Amundsen put together the team for his Fram expedition , Kutschin was considered the only scientist and one of two foreigners on the intercession of Helland-Hansen and Fridtjof Nansen . He was supposed to accompany the trip, which was originally supposed to lead around Cape Horn over the Bering Strait into the North Polar Basin, to San Francisco and carry out oceanographic studies. Before the Fram left for the south, she cruised for a month in the North Atlantic , where Kutschin determined the temperature and salinity of the Gulf Stream at 13 different depths at 24 stations . The measuring program was coordinated with that of two other ships, the Frithjof and the Michael Sars .

After a stopover in Bergen , the Fram left Norway on August 9, 1910. A month later, Amundsen explained to the surprised expedition members that the real destination was the South Pole . This gave Kutschin the opportunity to do oceanographic pioneering work in the South Atlantic during Amundsen's march to the pole according to a plan agreed between Amundsen and Helland-Hansen. The Fram turned east in the South Atlantic , passed Gough Island and the Kerguelen and anchored on January 14, 1911 in the Bay of Whales . When she was unloaded, she drove to Buenos Aires in March , where she was overhauled and provisions were made by June. Then she crossed the Atlantic Ocean close to the 30th degree of southern latitude to 480 km off the African coast and returned in a gentle curve past Sankt Helena to the South American coast. Kutschin and Lieutenant Frederick Gjertsen (1885–1958) took 891 water and 189 plankton samples at 60 positions and measured the temperature at various depths. After three months the Fram was back in Buenos Aires, and Kutschin left the ship and returned to Norway with his samples and measurement data. In the laboratory in Bergen he carried out an initial analysis and passed the results on to Helland-Hansen, who published them in 1912 with Nansen as Appendix V of Amundsen's expedition report. Kutschin's oceanographic measurements were the most extensive and detailed in the South Atlantic to date.

On December 10, 1911, Kutschin became engaged to the Norwegian Aslaug Poulsen.

Russanov expedition

In 1912 Kuchin returned to Arkhangelsk. At a meeting of the local "Society for the Study of the Russian North", of which he was a corresponding member, he met the geologist Vladimir Russanow, who soon after offered him to be his deputy on a geological expedition to Spitsbergen planned for the summer of 1912. Russanov, who had already spent several summers doing field research on Novaya Zemlya, had been commissioned to explore coal deposits on Svalbard. He appointed Kutschin captain of the Hercules , a small sealer built in 1908, and hired a second geologist in Rudolf Samoilowitsch . For two months, the expedition carried out an in-depth study of the coal deposits from Bellsund in the south to the Krossfjord in the north. Dozens of claims were staked out, and on August 20, the Hercules drove about 140 km west into the Greenland Sea for oceanographic surveys . Russanov has now informed the men that he intends not to return directly to Arkhangelsk, but to drive through the Northeast Passage . After Samoilowitsch had boarded a Norwegian ship with two companions and the research results in Green Harbor, the Hercules turned east. Strong westerly winds drove the ship to Matochkin Shares until August 31, 1912 . In a last telegram, Russanov mentioned oceanographic measurements taken by Kuchin on the way. He now wanted to drive east around the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya. The further fate of the expedition is unknown. Only years later were their traces found on the Minin archipelago and the poppy islands in the Kara Sea , including a wooden post with the inscription "Hercules 1913".

In 2000, parts of an approximately 100-year-old male skeleton were found on the Taimyr Peninsula , including the skull without a lower jaw. The man was between 22 and 27 years old at the time of his death. After a comparison with photographs of the members of the Russanov expedition, there is a possibility that these are the remains of Alexander Kuchin.

Honors

A cape and a small island in the Minin archipelago are named after Alexander Kutschin, as is a group of small islands north of Salisbury Island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago . He is also the namesake of the Kutschin Peak in the Antarctic Ross Dependency .

literature

• William Barr: Aleksandr Stepanovich Kuchin: the Russian who went south with Amundsen . In: Polar Record . Volume 22, No. 139, 1985, pp. 401-412 (English). doi: 10.1017 / S0032247400005647
• GA Bregman: Captain А. S. Kutschin . In: Moscow Department of the Geographical Society of the USSR: Letopis Severa . Volume 3, State Publishing House for Geographical Literature, Moscow 1962, pp. 130–147 (Russian).

Web links

• Kutschin, Alexander Stepanovich (1888–1912) on the website of the Fram Museum (English)
• GP Avetissow: Kutschin Alexander Stepanowitsch (16 (28) .09.1888-1913?) . In: Imena na Karte Rossijskoi Arktiki , Nauka, Sankt Petersburg 2003, ISBN 5-02-025003-1 (Russian).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cornelia Lüdecke : Amundsen. A biographical portrait . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2011, ISBN 978-3-451-06224-7 , p. 105.
2. ^ Björn Helland-Hansen, Fridtjof Nansen: Oceanography. Remarks on the Oceanographical Investigations carried out by the "Fram" in the North Atlantic in 1910 and in the South Atlantic in 1911 . Appendix V in: Roald Amundsen: The South Pole. An account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the “Fram”, 1910–1912 . Volume 2, Bell and Cockburn, Toronto 1912 (English).
3. ↑ Aant Elzinga: Roald Amundsen and his Ambiguous Relationship to Science (PDF; kB). In: Journal of Northern Studies . Volume 6, No. 1, 2012, pp. 53-109 (English).
4. ↑ Poljarnaja Ekspedizija Russanowa (PDF; 272 kB). In: Schiwaja Arktika . May 2003, pp. 138-139 (Russian).
5. ↑ WN Swjagin: Tragedija kapitana "Gerkulesa" medico-kriminalistitscheskaja rekonstrukzija . Orjol State Broadcasting Corporation, December 4, 2001, accessed May 3, 2020 (Russian).